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Via Damien Mulley comes the Sunday Times story that Labour are looking to web guru Zack Exley to get a web strategy in place for next May. Exley has worked for Howard Dean (for the last US Presidential Election), John Kerry (ditto) and UK Labour. Go to Mulley and the Times article for some comment. My own quick response is to hope this heralds a long engagement with the net in Irish politics.
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techPresident – The Future of Campaign Technology: The Ground Game
Irish Parties looking at learning online and database lessons from Obama could do worse than bear this post in mind. Almost as soon as the election is over, improvements and evolution are making some parts redundant and others essential. Get your campaign an i-phone for everyone? Might be better than printing flyers, it goes to show how parties, if they take it seriously, need to keep ahead of the wave - not just follow.
Colman at the EuroTrib give his reasoning on why Lisbon is dead. The Government's incapable handling of the budget cuts are the nail in the coffin.
Fine Gael’s Leo Varadkar offers his view on how the SBP Opinion Poll would translate in an election.
Think tank: Time for democracy to click into place
Dan Sullivan gets himself into The Sunday Times, calling for the internet to connect citizens to a more meaningful democracy. Its an argument I agree with wholeheartedly myself. Have a read and let him know what you think.
Colm Burke MEP reckons that we need to get honest and tell people we will be holding a second Lisbon Vote in Oct 2009 with protocols desigend to secure a yes vote.
While it’s always interesting to test the effectiveness of different campaigning techniques that have enjoyed success in other countries, it is still questionable what Mr. Exley could do for Labour here in Ireland. After having made a name for himself working on two ultimately failed campaigns, Howard Dean’s and John Kerry’s, as well as his work on MoveOn.org, Labour should ask themselves, is this really a good idea?
There would also be the corporate email account issue. How many people use their work email address for personal use? How would Labour, or any political party for that matter, justify sending politically motivated messages to corporate email accounts, as would invariably happen. IBEC et al would have a field day claiming a political party was wasting the time of their paid employees.
Some people might think it better to grow this sort of stuff organically from within the resources the parties have (it’s not like there aren’t IT folks who are members of Irish political parties) rather than buying in ‘expertise’ which tells them what to do in the ‘tri-county area’.
A web strategy is all well and good. The people of this great nation are so behind in the broadband and connectivity league tables I query what effect a web strategist would have.
Fianna Fail’s ‘flesh pressing’ strategy seems to work, not that I’d be particularly supportive of the po-rty. The famed Galway races loom, potentially also a state funeral on the cards. The propaganda ‘101′ machine will roar and being frank will seriously effect the efforts of the opposition. Akin to the victorious republican party in the US.
Strategy and competitive advantage are simply summarised. Operating normally in the regular process driven environment of business, and operating effectively should deliver results, those being zero sum, planned policy outcomes no overtly specific value propositions. Gaining strategic competitive advantage requires a value proposition or set thereof, in politics a perceived value proposition is moving from zero sum, to positive sum. Convincing the proletariat to X the box and ‘vote once and vote often’. The noise already has begun ….sun bed bans for under 16’s, Health Service Executive strategies yadda.
On a separate note, I was rather disgusted at the political point scoring that Rabbite and Kenny levied on the government over the CC v. Ireland case and the Mr A case. These men clearly are not aware of doctrine of the separation of powers, regardless of the fact that the Brendan Smyth case caused a government to fall. Performances were nothing short of incompetent, neither man is indicating ability to lead the country. Mind you, at least their diction is significantly more polished than that of an Taoiseach. I hope this does not upset the ‘apple tart’.
I’m not sure we have a ‘doctrine’ on the separation of powers. We do have an independent judiciary if that is what you meant.
As far as I’m aware no one has suggested that the government should have interfered with the progress of the case through the judicial system, rather that the government should simply have been more aware that the case was passing through the courts.